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Thursday, November 6, 2014

How Dorothy leapt forward 40 years – and never aged by Sofia Grey || RETURN TO EMERALD CITY #Anthology

Return to Emerald City

A Collection of Sci-fi Romance Novellas Inspired by The
Wizard of Oz

Dorothy’s Red Shoes There’s no place like home… Dorothy is already feeling homesick for
Emerald City, and wonders if taking a job halfway around the world was a mistake.
When her love life crumbles–again–will she run for home?His Replay Girl If he only had the nerve… Ten years ago, Quinn made the best choice of his
life, and the biggest mistake. It’s true, his band, Lionheart, is one of the
biggest in the world, but how much does it mean if he can’t tell the woman he
loves how he feels?His Reboot Girl If only he had a brain… Scott woke up with his head spinning and not much
else going on up there. Now he’s a suspect in a terrorist plot, and on the run.
One woman insists she's the key to his past and his freedom. Too bad he doesn't
remember her.His Rewind Girl If he only had a heart.... Cam is as much machine as man. There are days
he loathes the CyGes implants that saved his life but couldn't do the same for
his family. They replaced his limbs, but now he needs someone to mend his
heart.

For a chance to win a copy of any ebook
from my backlist, leave me a comment to say what new tech you’d like to see in
40 years time. I’ll throw in some swag too, for the funniest replies.

Late last year, I wrote a contemp romance
novella, called Dorothy’s Red Shoes. I didn’t have an audience in mind, but it
was just one of those stories that called out to be written. Not long after, my
critique-partner and friend, Allyson Lindt, asked me to take a look at a
futuristic romance she’d just finished. The working title was The Tin Man, and
I’m not sure which of us had the lightbulb moment first!

Since we had Dorothy and the Tin Man, we
just needed a scarecrow and a lion, and our story collection – Return
to Emerald City - was conceived. However, Tin Man was set firmly in the
future, around 40 years from now, while I’d written Dorothy in the present day.
We knew that we wanted the stories to all be linked, and to build into a story
arc across the collection, and so I had to make some changes.

I admit, there was some angst on my part.
Plenty of emails flew back and forth across oceans and time zones, with me
plaintively asking, “how can I futurise
this section?”, but we got there, and my Dorothy doesn’t look a day older *
grin *

Updating the tech was surprisingly easy
(Mag-cars instead of fossil-fuel powered, and funky screens and computer
glasses in the office), and the location only needed a few tweaks.And I realised that my angst had been
unnecessary. At its heart, Dorothy’s Red Shoes is a timeless
story of a girl seeking love, but missing her home. She has some family
complications, and a tendency to fall for the wrong guy, but who doesn’t?

Here’s an excerpt from Dorothy’s Red Shoes:

After an hour of
trying to stare at Matthew without either him or Ben noticing, I finally
escaped and headed straight for the coffee cart. Ben’s words rang in my head on
a continuous loop. Ben had noticed I liked Matthew, and if he’d spotted
my crush, it had to be blindingly obvious. So why hadn’t Matthew? Maybe he
thought of me as one of the boys, like my own team did. For once, it would be
nice to be noticed.

My thoughts swirled
and darted in random directions. The big Christmas party, the one for all the
Wellington employees, was next week. If I wanted to make a real impression on
Matthew, that would be the place to do it. I was flying back to Emerald
City for the holidays, but that wasn’t until a couple days later.

How about if I
dressed up? Wore a slinky evening gown instead of my usual black slacks and
shirt, put on fuck-me heels instead of flip flops, and got my hair and makeup
done beforehand? My heart beat a little faster. Could I do it? The women he
dated were always well groomed and elegant. That was why I thought he liked
me—I was different from his normal floozies—but maybe that was where I
was going wrong. I had no idea. I needed a guy’s perspective, but who could I
ask?

“Hey.” The familiar
voice came from behind me. “You look miles away. You okay?”

Ben. Standing beside me at the cart. How long
had he been there? I watched, dazed, as he dug into a pocket, before holding
out his phone to pay for his drink. Unlike most of the programmers I worked
with, he had nice hands, with long slender fingers and neat, clean nails. I
pulled myself together.

“Yeah, just
thinking.” Ben was the closest I had to a male friend. Could I trust him?

He flashed me a
smile, and then frowned. “What? Have I got something on my face?”

“No.” Still I
stared, uncertain. He already knew I crushed on Matthew. What did I have to
lose?

I took a deep
breath, tried to calm the butterflies that danced in my stomach, and cast
around for the words I needed. “Can I ask you something?” It came out in a
jumbled rush, and I forced myself to slow down. “If you have a few minutes.”

“Sure.” He pocketed
his phone. “What’s on your mind?”

Come on, Dorothy.
If you can’t even ask Ben for help, there’s no way on earth you’ll ever attract
Matthew. “Ben, if a girl
was interested in you, how would you know?” I steeled myself for his laughter.
It didn’t come.

“In me?” His lips
tugged up at the corners. “Someone like who?”

Jesus. Why had I
even started this conversation? “Not you, per se, I mean in a general way.
Hypothetical.” Damn. I was blushing already. My stupid pale complexion meant I
went pink at the slightest thing.

Ben took his coffee,
picked up the ignored cup in front of me, and nodded toward a wooden bench.
“Should we sit down?”

I followed him and
sank onto the seat, taking my drink. I loved that Wellington was still
uncrowded, and had space for random parks and benches. Sitting together in the
sunshine made the conversation easier.

“In a hypothetical
way,” said Ben, “you mean how does a guy know when a chick likes him?”

If I blushed any
more, you’d be able to fry eggs on my cheeks. I nodded.

He shrugged. “I like
it when a girl talks to me. When we have things in common. If she flirts with
me.”

I already talked to
Matthew. We both liked going to the movies and eating dark almond chocolate.
Maybe it was just my flirtation skills that needed brushing up?

Ben had gone quiet,
and I snapped my attention back to him. He slipped off his specs and rubbed his
eyes, all the while looking at me. “I don’t think you’re talking about me
though.” His voice was strangely flat. “You mean Matthew.”

About
Allyson Lindt:

Allyson Lindt is a full-time geek and a
fuller-time contemporary romance author. She prefers that her geeky heroes come
with the alpha expansion pack and adores a heroine who can hold her own in a
boardroom. She loves a sexy happily-ever-after and helping deserving cubicle
dwellers find their futures together.

About
Sofia Grey:

Romance author Sofia Grey spends her days
managing projects in the corporate world and her nights hanging out with wolf
shifters and alpha males. She devours pretty much anything in the fiction line,
but she prefers her romances to be hot, and her heroes to have hidden depths.
When writing, she enjoys peeling back the layers to expose her characters’
flaws and always makes them work hard for their happy endings.